marxism and the nonhuman turn

This article was downloaded by: [Tulane University]On: 13 January 2015, At: 06:40Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH,UK

Click for updates

Rethinking Marxism: A Journalof Economics, Culture & SocietyPublication details, including instructions for authorsand subscription information:http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rrmx20

Marxism and the NonhumanTurn: Animating Nonhumans,Exploitation, and Politics withANT and Animal StudiesPhillip DrakePublished online: 07 Jan 2015.

To cite this article: Phillip Drake (2015) Marxism and the Nonhuman Turn:Animating Nonhumans, Exploitation, and Politics with ANT and Animal Studies,Rethinking Marxism: A Journal of Economics, Culture & Society, 27:1, 107-122, DOI:10.1080/08935696.2014.980677

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/08935696.2014.980677

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE

Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all theinformation (the Content) contained in the publications on our platform.However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and our licensors make norepresentations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness, orsuitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinions and views expressedin this publication are the opinions and views of the authors, and are not theviews of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Content shouldnot be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sourcesof information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions,claims, proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities

whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connectionwith, in relation to or arising out of the use of the Content.

This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes.Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expresslyforbidden. Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions

Dow

nloa

ded

by [T

ulane

Univ

ersity

] at 0

6:40 1

3 Jan

uary

2015

Marxism and the Nonhuman Turn:Animating Nonhumans, Exploitation,and Politics with ANT and AnimalStudies

Phillip Drake

With the emergence of the so-called nonhuman turn in the arts, humanities, andsocial sciences in recent decades, various intriguing and frequently dazzling articula-tions of Marxian terminologies and insights have arisen. While these intersectionswith Marxism are occasionally inharmonious, such friction can recast lines of inquiryboth within and outside Marxian traditions, enhancing analytical tools and alteringsenses of purpose. This article stokes these productive tensions by articulatingMarxism with actor-network theory (ANT) and animal studies. In addition to using ANTand animal studies to apply Marxian concepts like exploitation and alienation to thenonhuman world, it considers ways that Marxism might contribute to nonhumanstudies by analyzing the dynamics of nonhuman exploitation, foregrounding thehistorical productive processes that express social and ecological relations, andpromoting discussions about developing better political and economic systems. Thesereadings illustrate Marxisms ongoing relevance to current nonhuman studies.

Key Words: Actor-Network Theory, Animal Studies, Ecological Marxism, Exploitation,Posthumanist Marxism

With the recent nonhuman turn in the arts, humanities, and social sciences, variousintriguing and frequently dazzling articulations of Marxian terminologies and insightshave arisen with innovations arising from studies of the nonhuman. Whether speakingof eco-critique, animal studies, actor-network theory, theories of assemblage,theories associated with speculative realism, or the numerous explorations of themodalities of matter, each of these analytical perspectives has interesting ways ofprovokingand being provoked bydevelopments in Marxism. While these intersec-tions with Marxism are occasionally inharmonious, such friction can help recast linesof inquiry both within and outside of Marxian traditions by providing an enhanced setof analytical tools and a renewed sense of purpose.The present essay aims to stoke this productive tension both by observing the key

position of nonhumans in Marxism and by arguing for Marxisms place as a vitaltheoretical reference in current nonhuman studies. As various types of nonhumans haveincreasingly occupied my own research and teaching explores the intersections betweennature and technology in both literature and environmental politics, I have noticed that

2015 Association for Economic and Social Analysis

Rethinking Marxism, 2015Vol. 27, No. 1, 107122, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/08935696.2014.980677

Dow

nloa

ded

by [T

ulane

Univ

ersity

] at 0

6:40 1

3 Jan

uary

2015

recent calls for papers and conference announcements related to nonhuman studiesoffer little to no mention of Marxism. Yet as a theoretical tradition long concerned withthe identification and liberation of marginal beings ensnared in exploitative relations,Marxism is as useful as ever in this global era in which exploitation is increasinglywidespread, interconnected, mediated, masked, and dispersed through a range ofbiotechnological agents.The first two sections of this essay articulate actor-network theory (ANT) and animal

studies with Marxism in order to map out several key points of conflict and accord andto illustrate the many ways these theories potentially complement each other ininquiry. I focus on ANT1 and animal studies,2 in contrast to other noteworthy theoriesin nonhuman studies, primarily because I am familiar with them and find them usefulin my work and not because of any perceived deficit in other theories. ANTand animalstudies also provide reasonable representations of several key impulses in nonhumanstudies: an attention to various manifestations of nonhuman agency, whether inorganisms, objects, technologies, or processes; a rejection of the transcendentalhuman subject who is external to socionatural entanglements; and an emphasis onrelational ontologies. While each theorization associated with nonhuman studiesoffers specific variations on these themes, space restrictions and gaps in my expertisesupply practical reasons for staying with ANTand animal studies. For stylistic reasons, Iemploy the expression nonhuman studies to describe my grouping of ANTand animalstudies, knowing that nonhuman studies means many things to many theorists.The third part of this essay explores areas of complementarity between Marxism

and nonhuman studies, with a brief reading of Marxs (1976) depiction of therelationship between labor power and technological innovation from his chapter inCapital on machinery in the factory. His descriptions of the reserve army of labor, ofthe introduction of women and children into the factory, and of the transformationsin the qualities of labor power and of factory conditions reveal the malleable socialand ontological status of individuals when they are recognized, from the perspectiveof capital, solely by their capacity to add value to commodities via their own laborpower. That is, through its abstractions the processes of capitalist production reduceboth humans and animals to instruments of labor power, drawing both into its ownmechanics. This reading of Marx through the lens of ANT and animal studies allows abroader understanding of the dynamics of exploitation, while suggesting that the

1 Although actor-network theory involves a diverse set of concepts and theorists that are farfrom uniform in their engagements, the version of the theory I present is most closely associatedwith Bruno Latour and Michel Callon. Castree (2002, 11623) summarizes several definingperspectives: a recognition of the deep interconnectedness of nature and society; an emphasison connection that disregards local/global dichotomies; a notion of relational symmetry thatresists privileging human or social forces over other socionatural actors; a highly relational andcontingent notion of agency as always widespread and evolving; and a relational, performativeunderstanding of power.2 In this essay I primarily employ Donna Haraway, Jacques Derrida, and Cary Wolfe, whose well-known works consider relationships between humans and animals, the recognition and ascriptionof animality and humanity to others, and the profound aporias encountered when we consideranimal otherness.

108 DRAKE

Dow

nloa

ded

by [T

ulane

Univ

ersity

] at 0

6:40 1

3 Jan

uary

2015

Marxian concept of alienationdismissed by many as tainted by humanismmay berecuperated through its application to nonhumans.Beyond using ANT and animal studies to draw out theoretical strands within the

Marxian tradition that harmonize withand are relevant tononhuman studies, thisarticle contends that Marxian insights simultaneously enrich these two theoreticaltraditions. A nonhumanist form of Marxism might address the perceived politicalvacuum found inmany of ANTs canonical texts, particularly in Bruno Latours work. Theextension of Marxian concepts like exploitation and alienation into the nonhumanworldallows us to politicize ANTand initiate discussions that focus on developing political andeconomic systems that promote greater freedom and contentment for humans andnonhumans alike. Animal studies similarly benefits from Marxisms historical perspect-ive on the processes that both ascribe and deny human status. Where animal studiesinsists on exploring the dynamics of humanization, the violence and exploitation doneto beings whose bodies or behaviors are seen as inferior to humans, and the contingencyof articulations of social and ecological hierarchies, Marxism helps demonstrate theways these dynamics shift over time. A nonhumanist form of Marxism supplies animalstudies with terminologies and perspectives to better historicize the human subject,which changes alongside historical, cultural, and economic conditions.While noting alliances between Marxism and nonhuman studies, I do not mean to

disregard or flatten out important disagreements between various perspectiveswithin each theoretical tradition. Rather I observe these alliances in order topromote new discussions and lines of inquiry that might better account for the socialand ecological crises of this era.

We Have Never Been Human: Actor-Network Theory,Posthumanism, and Ecological Complexity

In an essay that explores both the tensions and shared theoretical impulses betweenANT and ecologically oriented versions of Marxism, Brian Gareau (2005) adapts BrunoLatours well-known idiom to suggest that we have never been human. Gareauobserves ANTs influence on the social and natural sciences, prompting experts toreconsider the human-centeredness of their work and rethink the roles of objects,nature, and other non-human actors (134). ANTrecognizes agency as dispersed amongan array of human and nonhuman actors in interactive, causal networks (Latour 2004,86). These networks express symmetry through the inextricable interrelatedness ofhuman and nonhuman forces, where human ideas, tools, and energies (includingcollections of human actors, social logics, and discourses) bind with nonhuman forces(e.g., environments, animals, and technologies) in triggering every action and event.The principle of symmetry thus casts attention upon nonhumans, which are

typically masked in anthropocentric social theories. Suddenly tools, machines,animals, humans, and environments align democratically as determined anddetermining socio-natural hybrids, as quasi-objects; formerly deaf and dumbnonhumans are allowed to speak in a networked community that generatesoutcomes (Latour 2010, 487). Noel Castree (2002, 118) notes that ANTian perspec-tives describe a world far richer than the society-nature dichotomy can allow,

POSTHUMANIST MARXISM 109

Dow

nloa

ded

by [T

ulane

Univ

ersity

] at 0

6:40 1

3 Jan

uary

2015

because they stitch back together the socionatural imbroglios that that dichotomyhas rent asunder. Gareau (2005, 140) suggests that ANTs descriptive richness offersan important on the ground perspective of the dynamics that lead to crisis andsocial transformation in capitalism.Gareau is not alone in observing the complicated yet potent lines of inquiry that

arise when ANT and Marxism intersect (for example, see Castree (2002), Kirsch andMitchell (2004), and Swyngedouw (2004)) and this intersection represents one edge ofa broad theoretical movement that aims to articulate Marxism with political ecology(see, for example, Burkett (1999), Foster (2000), OConnor (1998), and Loftus(2009)). Each of these works provides a nuanced account of nonhuman socio-nature3whether understood as nature, resources, instruments, animals, or otherphenomenaengaging with Marxian concepts like metabolic rift, contradiction,and praxis. Where ANT and green formulations of Marxism differ most is in theformers political agnosticism and its deployment of a radical empiricism thatprecludes accounts of beings and events that appeal to broad, contested terms likesociety, nature, and humans without examining the actors and relations thatshape the very production and dissemination of these terms (Castree 2002). Giventhis articles interest in nonhumans, it is worthwhile to proceed by exploring theimplications of taking Gareaus earlier statement seriously. If we have never beenhuman, what would our own nonhuman state of being mean to different historicalformulations of Marxism, and what might a Marxism without humans contribute toongoing work in nonhuman studies?It is not accidental that I pose these questions in a journal known for its

elaborations of Althusserian antihumanism, as these accounts of the subject generatespace to consider nonhuman agency. For Althusser (2005, 209) the subject is alwaysoverdetermined (adapting Freuds well-known term), reflecting in contradictionthe subjects situation in the structure in dominance of the complex whole. Thesubject expresses neither a transhistorical essence nor a singular agency capable ofdominating or excising the self from natural, social, economic, cultural, political,and other processes. The subject is always determined and determining,constantly engaged with diverse, inextricable networks (Resnick and Wolff 2008,566). And a genealogy of the antihuman subject can be traced in classical Marxiantexts: in the sixth of Marxs (1978b, 145) Theses on Feuerbach, which defines thehuman as the ensemble of the social relations; in Gramscis (1971, 352) PrisonNotebooks, where the human is a series of active relationships (a process)composed of interactions with other men and the natural world; and in Hardtand Negris (2000, 331) Empire, where the subject is a hybrid and modulatingproduct of procedures of biopower.

3 The notion of socionature arrives packed with many resonances. Following Swyngedouw (2004,1718), I employ the term to observe the inseparability of nature and society: The world is ahistorical geographical process of perpetual metabolism in which social and naturalprocesses combine in a historical geographical production process of socio-nature whoseoutcome (historical nature) embodies chemical, physical, social, economic, political, andcultural processes in highly contradictory but inseparable manners. Every body and every thingis a cyborg, a mediator, part social, part natural, lacking discrete boundaries and internalizingthe multiple contradictory relations that redefine and rework them.

110 DRAKE

Dow

nloa

ded

by [T

ulane

Univ

ersity

] at 0

6:40 1

3 Jan

uary

2015

This brief antihumanist genealogy reveals a subject who is generated throughenvironmental, cultural, and technological entanglements, a relational subject whomight also emerge in ANT. For example, Michel Callon (2007a, 142), whose work tendsto apply ANT to analyses of economic processes, describes the human as adistributed agency that goes beyond the somatic resources of the individual; it isthe variable outcome of a complex process of engineering. This agency can bedescribed more precisely as a socio-technical agencement4 consisting of materialelements, texts and discourses, competencies and embodied skills, routines and soon. Callons subject is also overdetermined, a production of interactions betweenvarious social and natural processes; however, when faced with the messy task ofdisentangling agencies for the purposes of inquiry, the observer acts by organizingactors into networks as black boxes, or unified entities. The human emerges as amacro-actor who is a micro-actor seated on black boxes, a force capable ofassociating so many other forces that it acts like a single man (Callon and Latour1981, 299). Both posthumanist Marxism and ANT describe a relational subject whoemerges through activity, who is the hybrid product and producer of socionature, andwho is entangled with vast socionatural actors and networks.This flattening of the subject, in Marxism via the processes of overdetermination

and in ANT through the principle of symmetry, repositions the work of analysis in atheoretical/political context. While overdetermination helps Marxism shake free ofits associations with economic determinism, it quickly expands the scale and scope ofanalysis, which Gibson-Graham, Resnick, and Wolff (2000, 7) describe nicely in theiraccount of overdetermination:

Causation and identity are complex unfoldings that yield themselvesdifferently to every analysis and every analytical moment. From thisperspective, each identity or event can be understood as constituted bythe entire complex of natural, social, economic, cultural, political, andother processes that comprise its conditions of existence. None of these canbe eliminated or assigned prior or fundamental importance, though everyanalysis singles out one or several for emphasis and investigation.

The processes of singling out threads of analysis from an entire complex ofconditions resonates with Latours (2010, 478) writings on the constructive characterof analysis, in which the researcher is an active agent who traces and arranges actorsand relations in networks that produce outcomes out of the vast causal connectionsthat extend through time and spaceoutcomes that help us understand the world.Acts of gathering, ordering, and analyzing represent nodes of mediation that

4 Callon (2007b, 319) employs the idea of agencement to describe the arranging or fixing ofhuman and nonhuman actorsorganisms, technologies, discourses, and proceduresas het-erogeneous elements that have been carefully adjusted to one another. An agencementtransforms a situation by producing differences (Callon 2008, 38). Callon adopts the wordagencement, which is generally translated into English as assemblage, from Deleuze andGuattaris A Thousand Plateaus. John Phillips (2006, 1089) notes that Deleuze and Guattari useboth assemblage and agencement in the original French text; the former is used lessfrequently and certainly never in a philosophical sense, as opposed to agencement, which hasa very precise correspondence to the notions of event, becoming, and sense.


Dow

nloa

ded

by [T

ulane

Univ

ersity

] at 0

6:40 1

3 Jan

uary

2015

characterize inquirys double character. In ANT and in posthumanist versions ofMarxism alike, inquiry is always receptive and productive, determined and deter-mining, and the researcher is always an actor within the field of inquiry.Perhaps the greatest area of friction between ANT and Marxism lies in the political

attitudes and ambitions of each approach. In contrast to Marxisms ethical imperativeto expose and undo exploitation in its many forms, ANT does not impose explicitethical or political demands upon its practitioners prior to their pursuit of ever moreaccurate and refined representations of actors in relation. This ostensible politicalindifference, combined with its demotion of the human subject within flat networks,is understandably unpalatable to critics who are concerned with identifying andovercoming exploitation. But as Latour (2005) is eager to note, although anthropo-centric, asymmetrical accounts of events marginalize a host of nonhuman actors andrelations, ANTian accounts are far from apolitical in their effect. ANT draws newlyvisible actors into the socionatural fray as active participants in a symmetrical,common world: To study is always to do politics in the sense that it collects orcomposes what the common world is made of. The delicate question is to decide whatsort of collection and what sort of composition is needed (256). Once again resonantwith a Marxist conception of inquiry that binds analysis to political action (e.g., Marx1978b), this delicate question gestures to the ethical and political interests that arealways expressed at the moment critique or composition occurs, even if theseinterests paradoxically manifest via attempts at evacuating interests. Here, ANTexpresses ambivalence about action in the political moment, but it is not politicallyindifferent, as ANT never transcends the politics of composition and analysis.This ANTian politics of composition may seem feeble, particularly in the absence of

any ethical imperative to resolve social and ecological crises (Rudy 2005, 118). Infact, a crude and excessive form of symmetry could be employed to maskexploitation through appeals to extremely distant actors and networks. In anotherproject, for instance, I studied a mud volcano in Indonesia that has stirred nationalcontroversy due to scientific conflicts over its cause. Some blame drilling beside thecrater, while others cite an earthquake that occurred two days earlier. Becauseresponsibility for assisting victims and funding the disaster management operations atthe disaster site was at stake, all stakeholders could appeal to contested science tosupport their respective interests, which resulted in significant delays in the deliveryof aid (Drake 2013). In this case ANT would have illuminated the various actors andinterests that shaped the production of each scientific report in order to refine theterms of dispute and prompt alternative questions about the premises of thescientific dispute; however, ANT could offer little to the mud volcano victims interms of promoting either social justice or a swift response. While it may bedemanding too much of ANT to expect more than providing the tools and perspectivesto explore what is well or badly constructed in reports about the disaster (Latour2005, 89), ANTs political ambivalence often restricts its suitability for justicemovements.Marxian terminologies and insights, however, might be employed to invigorate

discussions about an ANTian politics. Castree (2002, 116), for example, proposesmoving forward by splitting the difference between a weak version of ANT and arelational version of eco-Marxism, noting that ANT and Marxism have been crudely

112 DRAKE

Dow

nloa

ded

by [T

ulane

Univ

ersity

] at 0

6:40 1

3 Jan

uary

2015

staged as false antithesis. Gareaus (2005) suggestion that ANT could be mobilizedto improve our capacity to recognize the specific ecological modalities of exploita-tion is also useful. Another strategy with promising potential involves criticsdrawing Marxian concepts through ANT, like Swyngedouw (2006), who applies theMarxian notions of metabolism and circulation to a Latourian conception of urbanassemblages, and like Kirsch and Mitchell (2004), who use nonhuman agency in actor-networks to rethink Marxs conception of dead labor. In addition to responding tocritics who dismiss Marxism for its humanism, each of these projects reveals alliancesand intersections between the two traditions that gesture toward inquiries anddiscussions that might lead to new political formations.

Animal Studies and Marxism: Producing the Human

In spite of ANTs emergence as a key reference in studies of the nonhuman, therecasting of the subject as an actor in complex socionatural networks threatens todemote not only the importance of social relations in determining events but also theontological struggle over who or what qualifies as properly social. Theories emergingfrom animal studies have been particularly useful to critics who explore the ways inwhich communities establish the terms of social and ecological hierarchies as well asthe physical and discursive violence that is employed to secure these relations. Viaexplorations of animal bodies and of being through a diverse range of disciplines,animal studies intersects with Marxism in myriad complementary ways. Ted Benton(1993, 5960) argues, for instance, that both socialist moral thinking and theconcern for the well-being of non-human animals can benefit significantly by beingput into critical relationship with one another. Katherine Perlo (2002, 316) observesthat Marxisms aspiration to liberate the lowliest of our own is driven by an ethic ofsympathy, which today can be applied to animals who have been rendered lowly incontemporary culture and economic production. Ryan Gunderson (2011, 5456)examines Marxisms ongoing relevance for understanding human and animal relationsby addressing Marxs critical comments on animal welfare in Capital. Where somehave read these criticisms as symptomatic of a thread of anthropocentrist speciesism that stains Marxs writing, Gunderson suggests that these lines have nothing todo with the ethics of animal welfare; rather, they critique bourgeois ideologies ofsuperficial reformism that do nothing to alter real conditions of production.In her well-known works that explore the modalities of being and relating between

species, Donna Haraway regularly observes Marxisms influence in her project,particularly Marxisms capacity to expose the exploitation that occurs in capitalistproduction. Despite this influence, Haraway (1991, 151) is also pointed in hercritiques of Marxist inquiries that presuppose a unified subject, that maskdifference through totalizing narratives of dominance and resistance (1312), andthat fail to account for the various bodies and species networked together both in theproduction of value and in the maintenance of socially necessary bodily needs(Haraway 2008, 49).As with ANT, each of these critiques express concern over the elevated status of the

human subject, who is typically synonymous with the Western liberal subject, in


Dow

nloa

ded

by [T

ulane

Univ

ersity

] at 0

6:40 1

3 Jan

uary

2015

relation to other beings. In the well-known account of an encounter with his cat, ofstanding naked and suddenly finding himself caught in the cats gaze, Derrida (2002,37480) challenges Descartess mechanistic characterization of animal life, whichdistinguishes man from animal based on the capacity to respondand not merelyreactto others. Derrida recognizes the cat as an irreplaceable individual withunique experiences and understandings not only of the world but also of thisencounter with the author. In a deft analysis of Derridas experience and reflections,Haraway (2008, 20) observes that the key question that emerges in Derridasencounter with his cat is not whether the cat could speak but whether it is possibleto know what respond means and how to distinguish a response from a reaction, forhuman beings as well as for anyone else. This scenario prompts exploration not intowhat animals ostensibly lack or are denied in anthropocentrism but rather thedeath-defying arrogance of ascribing such wondrous positivities to the human (79).Cary Wolfe (2003, 6) similarly observes that the figure of the animal historically hasbeen used to establish speciesist ideologies that secure the humans appreciatedstatus:

The figure of the animal in the West (unlike, say, the robot or the cyborg) ispart of a cultural and literary history stretching back at least to Plato andthe Old Testament, reminding us that the animal has always been especially,frightfully nearby, always lying in wait at the very heart of the constitutivedisavowals and self-constructing narratives enacted by that fantasy figurecalled the human.

Not only have we never been human, but the fantasy of being human also hinges onthe ideological production of the subhuman animal, whose demotion concurrentlypromotes the human.These formulations in animal studies of the human as a fantasy figure resemble

Horkheimer and Adornos classic portrayal of humans as pseudoindividuals. ForHorkheimer and Adorno (1987, 203), reason provides the ideological foundation for theprocesses of humanization establishing individuals as properly human: ThroughoutEuropean history the idea of the human being has been expressed in contradistinctionto the animal. The latters lack of reason is the proof of human dignity. Reason notonly secures the humans eminence within Enlightenment narratives of progress but italso reinforces these narratives, which ironically culminate in the dehumanizinginstrumentalization of individuals as workers, soldiers, and consumers: humans,reduced to their socioeconomic functionality, become pseudoindividuals (11826).Reason is, however, always exchangeable with other ideologically charged concepts

that mark and secure the fantasy of the humans ecological supremacy. As alreadynoted in the works of Derrida (2002) and Haraway (2008), the perceived capacity torespond instead of react, and of being capable of judging response from reaction, hasan enduring historical potency. Physical characteristics (e.g., skin tone, hair texture,and opposable thumbs) and behavioral traits (e.g., violence, emotion, and sexualproclivities) are also employed as markers for distinguishing humans and nonhumans.As many theorists have noted (e.g., Brody 1998; Singer 1989; Spurr 1993), it is noaccident that these characteristics have racial and gendered resonances.

114 DRAKE

Dow

nloa

ded

by [T

ulane

Univ

ersity

] at 0

6:40 1

3 Jan

uary

2015

Whether speaking of workers rights in the industrial era, the status of theindigenous person in the colonial era, or the universal-global-liberal subject in thecontemporary information age of capitalism, configurations of humanness andnonhumanness establish and naturalize both the relations between groups of beingsand the disciplinary methods used to reproduce these relations. Wolfe (2003, 8) notesthe violent implications of these slippery categories of human and nonhuman being,which can be employed to rationalize violence against the social other of whateverspeciesor gender, or race, or class, or sexual difference. Here, the ecologicalhierarchy between human and nonhuman beings attaches an ontological supplementto social hierarchies. The domination of an individual or group in various social orders(e.g., economic exploitation, political marginalization, and biopolitical discipline)appears as a natural extension of an ecological order through which certain species,by virtue of their biological faculties, dominate others.As a theoretical tradition long occupied with identifying and undoing exploitation,

Marxism supplies animal studies with concepts and perspectives for analyzing thenonhumans marginal status. As witnessed in Marxs depiction of mid-nineteenth-century factory workers, as well as in Horkheimer and Adornos pseudoindividuals,Haraways cyborg, and Hardt and Negris multitude, the character and dynamics ofhuman and nonhuman being are in constant flux. Animal studies, like ANT, isextremely effective in exploring the processes of humanization and dehumanization,but Marxism helps historicize these processes and draw connections to specificcultural and economic phenomena.

Marxs Marginal Creatures

Nonhumans have always been important to Marxism, even if their presence has beenmuted or relegated by anthropocentric concerns.5 Recent developments in ecologi-cally oriented Marxism have led to works that foreground the nonhuman beings andforces involved in production. In his formulation of capitalisms second contradic-tion, for instance, James OConnor (1998, 177) suggests thatin addition tocapitalisms first contradiction, where crisis is based on an inability to realizesurplus profits arising out of overproductioncapitalism is vulnerable to a crisis ofunderproduction through its degradation of natural resources and conditions ofproduction. John Bellamy Foster observes an evident ecological impulse throughoutMarxs writing, which manifests in Marxs regular references to nature, his interest inJustus von Liebigs work in agricultural science, and his theorization of metabolicexchange. Foster (2000, 163) elaborates on Marxs notion of metabolic rift todescribe the material estrangement of human beings within capitalist society fromthe natural conditions which formed the basis for their existence. After tracing theidea of rift back to the humanist formulation of alienation in Marxs 1844Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts, Foster attempts to shake loose this humanismby foregrounding the solid and scientific basis of metabolic estrangement, a term

5 Foster (2000, 910) provides a nice summary of criticisms against Marx for beingantiecological.


Dow

nloa

ded

by [T

ulane

Univ

ersity

] at 0

6:40 1

3 Jan

uary

2015

which describes the complex, dynamic interchange between human beings andnature resulting from human labor (158). Paul Burkett (1999, 2631), a frequentcollaborator with Foster, argues that metabolic rift, the alienation of workers fromnatural conditions of production, is at the source of the economic and ecologicalcrises facing the world today. Because social conditions shape the character of laborpowers metabolic interaction with nature, a more sustainable (or less exploitative)production of nature requires less exploitative social relations. Thus, for Burkettecological exploitation is always already woven into the structures of capitalism.Foster and Burkett each repeatedly insist upon a synthesis of red and green

political concerns through a return to Marxs own texts (see Burkett 2006, 24), whichcontain many rich descriptions and analyses of the profound influence of nonhumansin the ecological relations that underpin all productive activity. Marx shows aparticular concern for nature, which appears in his writing as a deeply interactivenetwork of forces and conditions that make production possible, place limits onproductive potential, and shape the character of humans. In the first volume ofCapital, for instance, man confronts the materials of nature as a force of natureand physically appropriates the materials of nature in a form adapted to his ownneeds. Through this movement he acts upon external nature and changes it, and inthis way he simultaneously changes his own nature (Marx 1976, 283). While thispassage is demonstrative of the deep co-constitutive interactivity between thehuman and nonhuman in production, in other passages of Capital Marx conveys thenonhuman as a dominant, often recalcitrant force in relation to human activity, whichwould align with perspectives in both ANT and animal studies. All three volumescontain repeated mention of the seasons influence in shaping and constraining theconditions of production: the availability of raw materials and the capacity to workvaries throughout the year (e.g., Marx 1976, 232; 1978a, 185; 1981, 369). All threevolumes also regularly observe the impact of wear and tear on currency (Marx 1976,223), labor power (275), machines (325), and railroads (Marx 1978a, 249), whichagain describes profound and often costly nonhuman activity.For the capitalist, one strategy of ostensibly reducing exposure to natural forces

that are recalcitrant to production is mechanizing the workplace, which introduces adifferent modality of nonhuman force into productive relations. This relationshipbetween human labor and mechanized nonhuman force takes center stage in Marxschapter on factory machinery in the first volume of Capital. At first glance, themachine appears to complement human labor by taking over menial, muscular tasks.The steam engine, for example, freed production from weaker and more unreliablepower sources such as horses (the worstmotive force because a horse has a head ofits own), wind, and water, which are inconsistent and uncontrollable (Marx 1976,4978). Echoing this minimizing of wild nature, the increasing and intensifyingmechanization of the workplace aims to minimize the influence of the hand of manin the raw materials passage from the first phase to the last (502).The only humans who experience the benefits of increased technological innova-

tion, however, are the capitalists, as machines come to dominate the productiveprocesses in the industrial factory. Marxs description of these machines resembles atechno-ecological network, a chain of mutually complementary machines, or a

116 DRAKE

Dow

nloa

ded

by [T

ulane

Univ

ersity

] at 0

6:40 1

3 Jan

uary

2015

collective working machine, which is now an articulated system composed ofvarious kinds of single machines, and groups of single machines Anorganized system of machines to which motion is communicated by thetransmitting mechanism from an automatic center is the most developedform of production by machinery. Here we have, in the place of the isolatedmachine, a mechanical monster whose body fills whole factories, and whosedemonic power, at first hidden by the slow and measured motions of itsgigantic members, finally bursts forth in the fast and feverish whirl of itscountless working organs (Marx 1976, 5013).

Each organ of each machine in this mechanical collective represents, in Latours(2004, 2005, 2010) works, a composition of socionatural interactions involving laborand materials. Each is a black box that acts in productive networks; as a compositionof capital, dead labor, nonhuman materials, and nonhuman conditions of production,however, each black box also expresses previous actors and relations.These mechanical networks transform not only the conditions of production but

also the human. The mechanical monster devalues labor by reducing his physicaland intellectual demands, prolonging the working day, and intensifying daily laboroutput (Marx 1976, 51742). Soon the human is drawn into the factorys mechanics:The lifelong specialty of handling the same tool becomes the lifelong specialty ofserving the same machine. Machinery is misused in order to transform the worker,from his very childhood, into a part of a specialized machine. In this way, not only arethe expenses necessary for his reproduction considerably lessened, but at the sametime his helpless dependence upon the factory as a whole, and therefore upon thecapitalist, is rendered complete (547). This depiction of machines altering the mindsand bodies of workers provides a detailed account of nonhuman agency exerting itsoverpowering influence on a socionatural network.But since the human is already a fantasy figure, this mechanization of the worker

illustrates one of many shifts within the nineteenth-century factory ecosystem. It isworth noting, for example, that machines were not the only new arrival to theevolving factory that devalued labor: there was also the entrance of women andchildren. In the historical development of socioeconomic relations in the West,masculine, muscular power was generally a privileged form of labor power, andMarx typically refers to a male worker when writing about labor power. In thepremachine era, the value of labor was determined by the labor time necessary forthis male worker to maintain both himself and his family (Marx 1976, 518). Asmachines entered the workplace to cheapen muscle power, each member of thefamily had to earn their keep. And as the status of muscle power withered,individuals whose labor power was previously either unrecognized (particularly withwomen in the domestic sphere) or devoid of value (children) became intelligible asexploitable subjects. This intelligibility not only intensified hardship for laborerscoming not from the promotion of the status of women and children but by demotingthe position of menbut also reinforced their instrumental status.Mans status is always precarious when viewed through the abstractions of

capitalism, in which the capacity to add value to commodities by contributingexploitable labor power is what distinguishes a human from a horse or a steam engine


Dow

nloa

ded

by [T

ulane

Univ

ersity

] at 0

6:40 1

3 Jan

uary

2015

(Marx 1976, 307). But women, children, and everyone else who was not a Westernmale were especially vulnerable to the social and ontological marginalization thatwas reinforced by ideologies of economic efficiency and expansion. This social andontological demotion was perhaps best typified in the colonial setting, in whichpreviously self-sustaining native societies generally lacked the social, scientific, andmechanical technologies to metabolize their resources for a global market. Theabsence of these productive technologies reinforced racist ideologies that generallyunderstood deviations from Western orders of production as demonstrative ofdeficiencies that were intrinsic to native life, in which the native was depicted asignorant, lazy, and animal-like (Adas 1989, 1134). Through labor, natives might havebeen able to add value to a commodity, but typically not on the scale and termsnecessary to secure their standing as exploitable laborat least not initially. Throughthe lens of capitalist ideology, where the production of value is always positive, theappropriation of land and resources from natives found not only economic justifica-tion but also an ethical rationale. Conquest became understood as a civilizingmission (200) in which, by reorganizing traditional societies and practices, Westernintrusion enriched and protected natives from their own barbarism (Fanon 2004, 14954). The profound effects of these abstractions cannot be overstated, especiallyconsidering the effects of imperial practices in shaping societies, economies, andspaces since the nineteenth century.In the context of his chapter on machines in the factory, however, Marx appears less

concerned with critiquing the relative qualities of various beings labor power thanillustrating the ways that intensified technological conditions of production transformlabor power. As Marx (1976, 781) notes later in Capital, the accumulation of capital comes to fruition through a continuing increase of its constant component at theexpense of its variable component. In other words, technological innovations in thefactory serve to de-skill variable labor power to the point where it becomesdisposable, which leads to the formation of a surplus population, the industrialreserve army of workers. For the purposes of accumulation, the specific qualities ofworkers and their labor power is less important than their capacity to be integrated orset free according to market conditions (790). In addition to providing security to theproductive interests of capitalists who face threats from competition and evolvingmarkets, the reserve army forces workers to compete for jobs, which keeps wages low.And as technology advances to de-skill labor, the reserve army enlists not only skilledworkers who had been released from their jobs but also unskilled workers whosecontributions were never before viable to the productive needs of industry.While the creation of the reserve army for capitalism explicitly demonstrates the

demotion of workers social status, this demotion is also ontological. Marx neversuggests in this section that people in the reserve army are anything less than human,but the quality of human being depicted suggests an abject state of being: Thissurplus population creates a mass of human material always ready for exploitationby capital in the interests of capitals own changing valorization requirements (Marx1976, 784). As much as the wording and the idea of surplus people haunts thisquotation, the reduction of individuals to human material once again illustratescapitalisms instrumentalization of beings. The progress of industry in the mid-nineteenth century depends on the constant transformation of a part of the working

118 DRAKE

Dow

nloa

ded

by [T

ulane

Univ

ersity

] at 0

6:40 1

3 Jan

uary

2015

population into unemployed or semi-employed hands (786). As a mass of humanmaterial or unskilled and semi-employed hands, the ontological status of humanbeing becomes virtually identical with that of a factory blade, hose, or pulley.Marxs depiction of various states of being and working, along with the conditions

that shape how we recognize a being or worker, is indicative of the status ofindividuals as boundary creatures, using Haraways (1991) term. As capitalismsabstractions reduce man to a labor power drawn into industrys mechanics, musclepower begins to resemble horse power and machine operation begins to resembleoperational machines: both human/animal and human/machine lines of distinctionblur. There is a similar formulation of boundary creatures in the CommunistManifesto, in which Marx and Engels describe the historical circumstances leadingto the emergence of capitalism, a mode of production that redefines the socio-economic conditions that establish not only who (the capitalist) exploits whom (thelaborer) but also who is excluded from formal productive relations altogether and isidentified unstably at the boundary of the natural and socialtypically, women andnon-Westerners (131). The fact that innovations in the conditions of production cansuddenly upset structures of exploitation between capitalist and laborerbysuddenly relegating the laborer to boundary status as reserve laboronce againunderscores the humans fantasy character.While animal studies helps reveal the ideological processes through which people

articulate narratives of humanness, Marxs chapter on machines demonstrates theprecarious character of narratives secured by productive relations. And while Marxsown biases are not absent from his characterizations of boundary creaturesastheorists engaged with issues related to feminism, gender, race, colonialism,development, and ecology have long observedhis critiques aim always at theemancipation of individuals from exploitative productive relations. By illustrating thecontingency of the laborers status while calling attention to the vast network ofnonhuman agencies involved in production, both animal studies and ANT present waysof extending discussions about alienation and exploitation into the nonhuman world.

Conclusion

Inflected by ANT and animal studies, these readings from canonical Marxian texts andmore contemporary formulations ecological Marxism demonstrate Marxisms ongoingimportance to nonhuman studies and also indicate ways that nonhuman studies mightinvigorate Marxism. Nonhuman studiesagain, represented here via ANT and animalstudiescan prompt Marxism to rethink agency and causality in order to factor in awider array of socionatural organisms and objects that produce, and are produced by,socionatural relations. ANT helps animate the host of nonhuman actorssuch ascapital, machines, and labor powerthat influence the conditions of production inMarxs chapter on factory machinery. These contributions are more than descriptive,however, as ANT expands the horizon of inquiry to consider instances of exploitationthat occur outside of capitalist/laborer relations. Animal studies also contributes to aMarxian understanding of exploitation by calling attention to both nonhuman laborand the processes that distinguish humans from nonhumans. And as Marxs writing on


Dow

nloa

ded

by [T

ulane

Univ

ersity

] at 0

6:40 1

3 Jan

uary

2015

changing factory conditions demonstrates, understandings of the human subject arecontingent upon changing historical and technological processes that foreverdestabilize the fantasy figure of the human.As this article repeatedly suggests, the intersection between Marxism and non

human studies is not unidirectional. In addition to nonhuman studies offering newtools for examining Marxian concepts, these concepts offer durable and incisiveperspectives for exploring the qualities of various beings and relations that shape theworld. For ANT, the extension of Marxian concepts like exploitation and alienation tothe nonhuman world suggests the possibility of stronger political engagements that gobeyond the politics of masking and foregrounding agents in networks. A morepoliticized version of ANT would more forcefully examine the vast exploitativeentanglements that occur in socionature and would consider the types of political andeconomic relations that might provide greater freedom and contentment to diverseactors. The posthumanist Marxian notion of overdetermination could also contributeto ANTian inquiry through the formers emphasis on complexity and contingency, onevery cause simultaneously being an effect and moreover by its attention to thebeings and relations produced through historical, economic, and cultural processes.For animal studies, Marxism historicizes the figures of the human and nonhuman,

offering concrete and well-vetted terminologies and perspectives for exploring thedynamics of a beings contested social and ontological status. Again, the concepts ofexploitation and alienation are particularly useful for understanding not only thearray of factors that influence how individuals live and relate to others in the worldbut also the various formulations of power that influence these relations. In addition,posthumanist Marxisms notion of overdetermination gestures to the dynamic socialand ecological structures articulated in the production of human and nonhumansubjects as well as the power expressed through these structures, which inflate anddegrade the status and activity of subjects. This intersection between posthumanistversions of Marxism and nonhuman studies seems ripe for innovative analysis, as inRoelvinks (2013, 54) recent article that develops a politicized notion of speciesas apolitical collectivity without essencein order to analyze humanitys conducttoward others and the myriad human qualities produced through these encounters.As exploitation appears increasingly remote and abstract through the various

mediating institutions and technologies that operate in the contemporary world, it iscrucial to mobilize conceptual tools to account for our vulnerable others, whetherenvironmental, animal, or some other threatened being or object. To this end itmakes sense that critics continue to rethink concepts like alienation, class formationand expression, the labor theory of value, and revolution alongside the waystheoretical developments in nonhuman studies can animate these concepts. In thespirit of works cited throughout this projectespecially those of Castree (2002),Perlo (2002), Gareau (2005), Rudy (2005), and Haraway (2008)this article aims topromote closer and more serious engagements between Marxism and nonhumanstudies, noting the possibility for developing new lines of inquiry and addressingperceived shortcomings within each tradition. While observing areas of accordbetween these traditions, it is important to recognize ongoing tensions that remain.Rather than attempt to flatten out conflicts within and between these traditions,I want to gesture toward the possibility of this friction sparking new discussions and

120 DRAKE

Dow

nloa

ded

by [T

ulane

Univ

ersity

] at 0

6:40 1

3 Jan

uary

2015

analyses aiming to improve social and ecological conditions today. The potential fornew discussions and lines of inquiry to emerge in the intersections between the two isindicative of each traditions relevance and vitality in the contemporary era.

Acknowledgments

Thanks are due to Mark Lycett and the University of Chicago Program on the GlobalEnvironment for promoting projects and events that explore creative approaches topolitical ecology. I also would like to thank John Rieder and S. Charusheela for theirfeedback in discussions that eventually led to this article and the anonymous reviewersfor their generous comments on previous drafts. The usual disclaimers apply.

References

Adas, M. 1989. Machines as the measure of man: Science, technology, and ideologiesof Western dominance. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press.

Althusser, L. 2005. For Marx. Trans. B. Brewster. London: Verso.Benton, T. 1993. Natural relations: Ecology, animal rights and social justice. London:

Verso.Brody, J. D. 1998. Impossible purities: Blackness, femininity, and Victorian culture.

Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press.Burkett, P. 1999. Marx and nature: A red and green perspective. New York: St.

Martins Press.. 2006. Two stages of ecosocialism? Implications of some neglected analyses of

ecological conflict and crisis. Journal of Political Economy 35 (3): 2345.Callon, M. 2007a. An essay on the growing contribution of economic markets to the

proliferation of the social. Theory, Culture & Society 24 (78): 13963.. 2007b. What does it mean to say that economics is performative? In Do

economists make markets? On the performativity of economics, ed. D. MacKenzie,F. Muniesa, and L. Siu, 31157. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.

. 2008. Economic markets and the rise of interactive agencements: Fromprosthetic agencies to habilitated agencies. In Living in a material world:Economic sociology meets science and technology studies, ed. T. Pinch andR. Swedberg, 2956. Cambridge, M.A.: MIT Press.

Callon, M., and B. Latour. 1981. Unscrewing the big leviathan: How do actorsmacrostructure reality? In Advances in social theory and methodology, ed. K. Knorrand A. Cicourel, 277303. London: Routledge.

Castree, N. 2002. False antitheses? Marxism, nature and actor-networks. Antipode4 (1): 11146.

Derrida, J. 2002. The animal that therefore I am (more to follow). Trans. D. Wills.Critical Inquiry 28 (2): 369418.

Drake, P. 2013. Under the mud volcano: Indonesias mudflow victims and the politicsof testimony. Indonesia and the Malay World, no. 121, 299321.

Fanon, F. 2004. The wretched of the earth. Trans. R. Philcox. New York: Grove Press.Foster, J. B. 2000. Marxs ecology: Materialism and nature. New York: Monthly Review

Press.


Dow

nloa

ded

by [T

ulane

Univ

ersity

] at 0

6:40 1

3 Jan

uary

2015

Gareau, B. J. 2005. We have never been human: Agential nature, ANT, and Marxistpolitical ecology. Capitalism Nature Socialism 16 (4): 12740.

Gibson-Graham, J. K., S. A. Resnick, and R. D. Wolff, eds. 2000. Class and its others.Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Gramsci, A. 1971. Selections from the prison notebooks. Trans. and ed. Q. Hoardeand G. N. Smith. New York: Columbia University Press.

Gunderson, R. 2011. Marxs comments on animal welfare. Rethinking Marxism 23 (4):5438.

Haraway, D. 1991. Simians, cyborgs, and women: The reinvention of nature. NewYork: Routledge.

. 2008. When species meet. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Hardt, M., and A. Negri. 2000. Empire. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.Horkheimer, M., and T. W. Adorno. 1987. Dialectic of enlightenment: Philosophical

fragments. Trans. E. Jephcott. Ed. G. S. Noerr. Stanford: Stanford University Press.Kirsch, S., and D. Mitchell. 2004. The nature of things: Dead labor, nonhuman actors,

and the persistence of Marxism. Antipode 36 (4): 687705.Latour, B. 2004. Politics of nature: How to bring the sciences into democracy. Trans.

C. Porter. Cambridge, M.A.: Harvard University Press.. 2005. Reassembling the social: An introduction to actor-network-theory.

Oxford: Oxford University Press.. 2010. An attempt at a compositionist manifesto. New Literary History 41 (3):

47190.Loftus, A. 2009. The Theses on Feuerbach as a political ecology of the possible.

Area 41 (2): 15766.Marx, K. 1976. Capital. Vol. 1. Trans. B Fowkes. London: Penguin Books.. 1978a. Capital. Vol. 2. Trans. D. Fernbach. London: Penguin Books.. 1978b. Theses on Feuerbach. In The Marx-Engels reader, ed. R. Tucker,

1435. New York: W. W. Norton.. 1981. Capital. Vol. 3. Trans. D. Fernbach. London: Penguin Books.OConnor, J. 1998. Natural causes: Essays in ecological Marxism. New York: Guilford

Press.Perlo, K. 2002. Marxism and the underdog. Society and Animals 10 (3): 30318.Phillips, J. 2006. Agencement/assemblage. Theory, Culture & Society 23 (23):

1089.Resnick, S., and R. Wolff. 2008. The class analysis of households extended: Children,

fathers, and family budgets. Rethinking Marxism 20 (4): 54667.Roelvink, G. 2013. Rethinking species-being in the Anthropocene. Rethinking Marxism

25 (1): 5269.Rudy, A. 2005. On ANT and relational materialisms. Capitalism Nature Socialism 16

(4): 10925.Singer, P. 1989. All animals are equal. In Animal rights and human obligations, ed. T.

Regan and P. Singer, 14862. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall.Spurr, D. 1993. The rhetoric of empire: Colonial discourse in journalism, travel

writing, and imperial administration. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press.Swyngedouw, E. 2004. Social power and the urbanization of water: Flows of power.

Oxford: Oxford University Press.. 2006. Circulations and metabolisms: (Hybrid) natures and (cyborg) cities.

Science as Culture 15 (2): 10521.Wolfe, C. 2003. Animal rites: American culture, the discourse of species, and

posthumanist theory. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

122 DRAKE

Dow

nloa

ded

by [T

ulane

Univ

ersity

] at 0

6:40 1

3 Jan

uary

2015

Abstract''We Have Never Been Human'': Actor-Network Theory, Posthumanism, and Ecological ComplexityAnimal Studies and Marxism: Producing the HumanMarx's Marginal CreaturesConclusionAcknowledgmentsReferences

marxism and the nonhuman turn

Documents